I Fell For The Most Common Content Creator Trap
And I'm here to prevent you from doing the same.
This is going to be a short and bittersweet one today.
It's primarily bitter for me but sweeter for you once you recognize this trap.
Let’s begin!
It Begins With Making Content From EVERYTHING
For me it was mainly video games but this could be about books, TV shows, movies, and more. I wanted to play video games on-stream. Record everything so then I could cut it and make videos about those games like I’ve seen other people do.
The problem is nobody was watching anyway so who am I streaming to besides a handful of people?
I would have been ok with streaming a short game. I could handle one or two sessions. But I wanted to stream Role Playing Games.
Dragon Age, Mass Effect, The Witcher, Pathfinder, etc.
These are games of at least 50-100 hours of gameplay depending on how much energy you invest in side quests and exploration. God knows how many hours I put into The Witcher 3 back in the day.
And Then You Start to Burn Out
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re experiencing something similar. And if you’re anything like me, you also still work a day job or you have something else that takes up the majority of your day like family life.
The foundations of your new content creation objective begins to shake when suddenly you don’t have the time and your plans change.
You find yourself taking on too many content goals and progressing in none of them.
I wanted to play on stream the Dragon Age series before I start playing The Veilguard when it comes out in a month from today (Oct. 31st).
Before that I wanted to play the Mass Effect trilogy, the Witcher trilogy, and any Owlcat game (Pathfinder Kingmaker, Path of The Righteous, or the new Warhammer game).
How many did I finish on stream? 0.
And when you don’t finish the things you start, you feel disappointed with yourself because you lose twice: You both don’t keep your promises to yourself and your audience, and you don’t play the game you want to play.
It’s a vicious trap.
So What Did I Do About It?
Compromise.
I decided I am not going to stream any games for now. I’m just not in the mental and physical place in my life to consistently do that until I finish those games.
This could change if I’m at a place where the internet is my primary income stream instead of a day job.
But I didn’t want to completely abandon sharing my thoughts about those games. So I compromised with myself to write review blog posts once I finish the games.
That way I both finish the game and give an honest review from the position of a complete experience, and I also don’t have the added stress of streaming it to 0-1 viewers.
Did you also experience this kind of burnout? How did you deal with it? I’d love to chat about it in the comments below!
Thank you for reading. Please consider sharing or supporting this publication: